Subsidies And Responsibility

Dave Killion — August 13, 2012

This level of confinement is probably excessive.

I have never been a cat person, mostly because all the dogs I have known could have weighed three hundred pounds and never been anything but the sweet-natured companions they were, while any cat that weighed three hundred pounds would certainly have tortured me to death just for sport. Well, it turns out that people who subsidize these little killing machines by providing food, shelter, and health care, all without confinement, are accountable for a great deal of butchery –

“That mouse carcass Kitty presents you with is just the tip of a very bloody iceberg. When researchers attached kittycams to house cats, they found a secret world of slaughter…

…The carnage cuts across species. Lizards, snakes and frogs made up 41% of the animals killed, Loyd and fellow researcher Sonia Hernandez found. Mammals such as chipmunks and voles were 25%, insects and worms 20% and birds 12%. “

The camera footage indicates that for every one animal a cat brings home, three to four are either eaten or left to rot. Equally disconcerting is the danger to which these beloved pets are exposed. They are equally menacing and menaced. The cats, of course, are hardly to blame for this. It is only their nature that drives their behaviour. But this is as true with human beings as it is with felines. Once you elect to subsidize someone’s education, employment, upkeep, or lifestyle, you must be very careful to consider the consequences of that subsidy. To do otherwise is to cultivate behaviour that is either harmful to the individual, harmful to society, or perhaps even both.